PNSA Junior Camp

My dryland season job this year is perhaps the best I've had yet: junior coach. Three days a week I get to spend a few hours training with the Methow's up and coming teenage athletes as we run and rollerski and bag peaks in the North Cascades. This past week the Methow hosted the first PNSA junior camp of the year. Ben Husaby brought his Bend Nordic Team group up and led the camp based on his long-standing "Trout Lake model" of training camps: four big-volume days of training, a rollerski time trial and a final BIG day in the mountains. The weather in the valley really worked for us, shifting from rain to sun mid-way through Wednesday and staying beautiful all weekend.

I managed to snap some good shots of our hike on Sunday. We started at the Cedar Creek trailhead and veered off onto the Mudhole Lake trail which shot straight up a ridgeline adjacent to the creek trail, then continued on up until we reached the top of an unnamed peak which overlooks Silver Star peak, Kangaroo and Snagtooth Ridge, and the western depths of the North Cascades. A BEAUTIFUL day allowed for almost seven hours of mountain adventuring, leaving the athletes (and me) tired and happy as we jogged back into the trailhead.

A day off today, and I return to the business of my own training tomorrow. Scott's in Europe, Erik's in Alaska, Torin's in Bend and I'm in the valley; the MOD squad is spread across the globe but we're putting in the time - stay tuned!

Some pictures from yesterday's epic:

Ascending the trail at 7am - steep!

Our objective in the distance

The final scree-scramble to the summit

The boys on top of the peak - Kangaroo Ridge as the backdrop

Home

I got home to the Methow last night. Yesterday felt like a long day of travel. Trying to stay awake on the trip home from Park City, Utah was a struggle. It felt great to be able to sleep in my own bed last night.  The last couple of days of the camp felt hard, I could feel the weeks training adding up. It ended yesterday with a 2 hour rollerski from Park City to Jeremy Ranch and a hour and a half hour run on some sweet single track. I'm really glad I got the opportunity to go down there and train with everyone and get coached by the U.S. Ski Team coaches. Here are some pictures from the camp thanks to teamtoday.org.

Thank you coaches for hosting a great camp!

Chris using the heat from the exhaust to change a pole tip.

School's in Session

If there's been an extended narrative from this spring to summer, it's been that school's in session. Just as my 5th grade class celebrates it's summer freedom, I'm relishing my own changes in education. To join the MOD Squad, to begin working with Scott, to train alongside Sam and Erik, is to build the new associations that underlie creative innovation. This burning, this spark, this ignition has always been within me. It's just needed the chance to grow, blossom and burn.




Leading a group of young skiers along the climbs and descents of Mt. Bachelor. But who is it, exactly, who is the teacher and who is the student? (And while I'm on it, why does it seem so often in life do these happen to be opposing forces?)



Passion has no expiration date. The evolutionary function of play, captured in the blink of a camera's shutter. "Those most likely to prevail believe in possibilities - an optimist, a creative thinker, one who cultivates their own inner sense of power and control," begins the book. I'll be reading the rest.

Utah

Im in Park City, Utah training at the NTG Camp. The National Training Group is a group made up of 25 of the top junior and U23 athletes from around the U.S. The camp started off with a brutal hill climb called Agony Hill. The name says enough. I had a good race and finished fourth place out of the 9 guys here. The rest of the week has been lots of rollerskiing, running, strength training, and games. I have spent some time working one on one with the US coaches, working on technique and training. They have been filming us through out the week and last night we sat down with the coaches and analyzed it. Today we had a Sprint time trial at Soldier Hollow. I qualified 2nd, tying with two other skiers. I came in 15 seconds behind one of the fastest sprinters in the world, Andy Newell. After the qualifier we had 3 heats. It was a really good opportunity for me to battle it out with some of the top guys my age. It was a great chance to see the tactics Andy Newell uses, you can tell he has a ton of experience. He knows when to put in that little bit of extra effort to gap the rest of the field. He seemed to be really really strong pushing over the tops of the hills dropping the rest of the pack. We have four more days of intense training before I head back to Washington for some more training at home. 

Running up Agony Hill

Scott Patterson, winner

Andy Newell

Coach's analyzing my technique

Trail Work

I'm fortunate this summer to be working with the Methow Valley Junior Nordic Team as summer head coach. It's been a great way to stay involved with the program that developed Brian Gregg, Sadie and Erik Bjornsen, me and many other top skiers throughout the years. Last week was our first full week of coached training and for Saturday's workout we all showed up at the McCabe Trails at the high school to help Dalton DuLac clear deadfall and limbed portions of trailside trees. Word just got out that the Methow will host another SuperTour next winter - we'll make sure the trails are ready!

Here are a few pictures from the morning of work with the juniors:

Sage adopting a power stance as she wrestles with some barbed wire

Dalton and I discuss chainsawing tactics

Marc getting in that good torsional rotation while Gareth laughs at all the puny logs

Big Volume = Big Smiles

This may be my favorite training period of the year. Putting in back-to-back 18 to 20 hour weeks with the workouts all staying in a level 1 and 2 intensity, using many different modalities and spending hour after hour in the Methow spring landscape. Most of the last few weeks I've been training solo - Erik is currently in Park City at the National Training Group for the country's top juniors and U-23s, and Torin is happily continuing his on-snow volume training down in Bend. Not that their absences have left me with a dearth of training partners; Alison (Hanks; massage therapist, ultra-runner and girlfriend) is a great companion for long runs and post-workout climbing (good recovery!).

On Tuesday Alison and I took a trudge up Lucky Jim, the local 2000ft gain-in-30 minutes hill that we've been using for our uphill ski striding weighted workouts. Fortunately in the spring there is a runoff creek coming down from Lucky Jim which offers an apt opportunity for me to fill my water jugs before taking off up the hill.

Filling H20 jugs in the creek before starting up the trail

As summer arrives it's a huge benefit to be carrying water up the hill, because the sun strikes the slope directly on the trail - hot!

Travels and Travails

We finished our week-long training camp in Bend with a great 3 hour OD ski on Friday morning, then a few hours of (successful) rock climbing at Smith. A large Dairy Queen Blizzard, dinner and sleep later, we were on the road from Bend at 7:30am on Saturday morning, making our way up to Bellingham for the Ski To Sea relay race in which we were all skiing a cross country leg for different teams.

Earlier last week Scott had mentioned the brakes on the van were sounding strange. Being unable to remove the rear brake drum to examine them he utilized his innovative mechanical know-how and clamped off the rear brake line with some vice-grips and duct-taped them onto the chassis, essentially cutting off the power to the brakes. This quick-fix worked great until we hit Madras on Saturday morning to get gas and saw smoke POURING out of the rear wheel well. Not being very up on my brake mechanics I attempted to call first Scott, then my dad. Neither answered and we were left wondering where to go to get them fixed, it being Saturday morning of Memorial Day. We finally spied a Les Schwab and got some help. The guys there said we should take the clamps off first to release the pressure. Then he was kind enough to acknowledge that if he did start working on the brakes and found there were metal-on-metal or in any way unsafe, he wouldn't let us leave until they were fixed, and he had no parts in stock for the VW van. We opted to risk it and drove off. Fortunately no ill came to us and we made it safely to Bellingham!

Brake repair in the Les Schwab parking lot...

The race itself was a great time - lots of people and the weather at Mt. Baker was partly sunny. Brian represented really well, coming in a mere thirty seconds behind Ivan Babikov, Canada's 5th place Olympian from Vancouver. Erik was right on Brian's tail, another thirty seconds back. Torin and I struggled a bit with the steep course and soft snow as we were unable to throw down our signature power skiing; Torin held well with the lead group and I came in around a minute later. Definitely a fun race and a great way to get some ski-specific intensity in late May!

Now it's back to the grindstone with uphill ski striding, paddleboarding and muscular endurance all on the schedule for this week. Train on!